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We are about to launch a new phase of the Fairwork project in South Africa with our colleagues at the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of Manchester, and the University of Oxford. I'll share full details of the next stages of the project next week. But, in the meantime, please help share this job ad. It is for a full-time 29-month postdoc to work directly with Professor Jean-Paul van Belle (UCT) along with Professor Richard Heeks (Manchester), Jamie Woodcock (Oxford), and myself. We hope to have someone in place at the University of Cape Town as soon as possible so that we can start the project in the next few months. Again, please share widely with any people/lists/forums that you think might be interested/suitable.

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP: EVALUATING DIGITAL WORK PLATFORMS IN SOUTH AFRICA AGAINST DECENT WORK STANDARDS

Closing Date: 31 August 2018

The Centre for Information Technology and National Development in Africa (CITANDA) wishes to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (PDRF) in the evaluation of digital work platforms (Uber, SweepSouth, Upwork, etc.) in South Africa against decent work standards.

The PDRF will conduct research for a multi-disciplinary research project supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council as part of its GCRF New Models of Sustainable Development programme. The research project aims to (i) improve working conditions for digital platform-workers in low- and middle-income countries; (ii) develop a certification scheme designed to set minimum standards for decent work and actively certify platforms through a newly-created “Fairwork Foundation”; and (iii) create a Code of Practice for South African platforms.

The PDRF will be responsible for a discrete area of research that seeks to understand key structural and individual-level concerns relating to platform work in South Africa; the key issues and obstacles experienced by South African platform workers; and the differentiation of such issues for particularly disadvantaged or vulnerable sub-groups. This will involve both desk and primary field research, most likely conducted in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

The PDRF role is an exciting opportunity to undertake cutting-edge research on a topic that is central to the future of work and to the harnessing of digital technologies for socio-economic development. Working within CITANDA, you will be part of a well-resourced, culturally-diverse and friendly research unit. More broadly, you will be working as part of a collaborative and multi-disciplinary team of world-leading academics from the University of Cape Town (Prof. JP van Belle), University of the Western Cape (Prof. Darcy du Toit), University of Oxford (Prof. Sandy Fredman, Prof. Mark Graham) and University of Manchester (Prof. Richard Heeks) spanning internet studies, law, information systems and development studies.

Academic/experience criteria:

Required

A PhD, awarded within the previous five years, in a relevant field which could include – but is not limited to – internet studies, information systems, development studies, or work and employment.

Strong skills in the planning, implementation, software-based analysis and write-up of primary field data.

Practical experience of qualitative fieldwork in a global South context.

Demonstrated ability to undertake desk-based evidence reviews.

Demonstrated capacity to produce peer-reviewed research articles.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.

Ability to work independently within a research team and to meet deadlines.

Desirable

Knowledge and experience of field research in South Africa.

Knowledge of South African official languages other than English.

Specific expertise relating to digital platform work.

Prior experience of working on research projects.

Conditions of award:

Applicants must have completed their doctoral degrees within the past 5 years and may not previously have held a full-time permanent professional or academic post.

No benefits or allowances are included in the Fellowship but the fellowship stipend is tax free.

As part of their professional development, the successful candidate may be required to participate in a limited capacity in other CITANDA activities such as teaching and/or student supervision.

The successful applicant will be required to register as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cape Town immediately and will not be considered a UCT employee.

The successful applicant will be required to comply with the university’s approved policies, procedures and practices for the postdoctoral sector.

Value and tenure:

The value of the fellowship is ZAR 260,000 pa and is tenable for up to 29 months. A performance review will happen after the first year. Any further extension would be dependent on performance, and sourcing of additional funding for the post.

Application requirements:

Applicants should submit (i) an application letter that includes a short description of their expertise and research interests, and how these relate to the position, specifically addressing the required and desirable criteria listed, (ii) a CV including a publication list, iii) a copy of their PhD thesis and up to two published or submitted papers, (iv) copies of academic transcripts and/or certificates, and (v) email addresses of at least two referees directly involved in their PhD and/or previous postdoctoral research.

The University of Cape Town reserves the right to disqualify ineligible, incomplete and/or inappropriate applications. The University of Cape Town also reserves the right to change the conditions of the award or to make no award at all.

I'm currently working on a book chapter about our 'digital labour and gig economy' research. The chapter attempts to contextualise plans and projects to expand digital labour schemes by governments, third-sector organisations, and private sector actors. In writing the chapter, I thought it would be useful to outline the three broad perspectives that I have encountered in previous research.

Imaginaries of the ways that technologies alter positionalities at the world’s economic margins are used to open up or limit possibilities. They are used to drive policies and plans; and they are deployed to shift attention and resources in some directions and away from others. It is therefore worth thinking about the nature of them, and what sort of changes they actually propose to bring into being.

But I'd welcome other directions and other readings as edit this chapter.

The global village

This is one of the most persistent visions underpinning hopes about transformations that the internet can bring about. Built on Barlow’s (1996) vision of the internet as an ontic space in which states ‘have no sovereignty where we gather’. The global village allows any connected economic actor to be brought into a shared digital market space or communications space. Positionalities can be transcended and barriers to non-proximate interactions have technical fixes. The global village imaginary allows for a vision that anything can be done from anywhere.

Shrinking distance

This vision centres on the perceived ways in which technology would shrink geographic frictions with richer, faster, and cheaper connections and those diminishing frictions, in turn, lead conceptions of distance as a unit that can be shrunk. In other words, frictions between places are seen to be significant impediments holding back trade; and information and communication technologies (ICTs) not only eliminate those frictions, but facilitate and mediate a global economy. While this perspective shares much in common with the global village, there are significant differences between the two. Both perspectives attribute significant power and agency to technology and allow it to function as a bridge, intermediary, or tool that can fundamentally transform positionalities. Both highlight how the location of a business or businessperson could be rendered irrelevant: business can now be transacted with anyone, anywhere. However, while the global village perspective explains this change because of access to the Internet, the shrinking distance perspective makes the same argument with a focus instead on the diminishing role that distance plays. In the former, geographic positionality no longer matters (hence the temptation to assign an ontic role to digital spaces), whereas, in the latter, geographic positionalities retain more significance: the world here remains material and augmented (rather than as a dualism between virtual and material spaces), but distance between those material places becomes less important. The shrinking distance perspective ultimately presents a world of potential. The old barriersof distance and geography, that previously rendered some places as peripheries and some places as cores, have melted away; and it is only a matter of time before people in economic margins can begin to buy, sell, and interact with anyone, anywhere

Digital augmentations

Finally, there are visions of digital augmentations in which economic actors neither imagine a digital global village in which they can interact with their peers, or a world in which distance had become meaningless. Instead, they focus on the incremental changes brought about by ICTs and the ways in which those changes are embedded into existing networks, structures, and positionalities. The primary argument put forward here is that distance is just one hurdle to cross. As such, the ability of ICTs to mediate new types of communication and information flow is of necessarily limited benefit. This recognition of the myriad social, economic, and political challenges inherent to doing business across international borders results in a conceptualization of distance as always socially constructed and always grounded in individual contingencies and positionalities. In other words, we are offered a more modest view of what new communications affordances can achieve. There is no sense that human territoriality can be replaced by communication technologies, and there is a full recognition of the fully augmented and relational links between technology, space, and economic activity.

Abstract:This article presents findings regarding collective organisation among online freelancers in middle‐income countries. Drawing on research in Southeast Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa, we find that the specific nature of the online freelancing labour process gives rise to a distinctive form of organisation, in which social media groups play a central role in structuring communication and unions are absent. Previous research is limited to either conventional freelancers or ‘microworkers’ who do relatively low‐skilled tasks via online labour platforms. This study uses 107 interviews and a survey of 658 freelancers who obtain work via a variety of online platforms to highlight that Internet‐based communities play a vital role in their work experiences. Internet‐based communities enable workers to support each other and share information. This, in turn, increases their security and protection. However, these communities are fragmented by nationality, occupation and platform.

Connectivity throughout the world is rapidly changing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Sub-Saharan Africa. The region is quickly moving from a state of digital dis-connectivity, to a state where hundreds of millions of citizens are connected to the digital economy.This rapid change in connectivity has generated a lot of hope and excitement for the potentials of an emergent knowledge economy in the region. Sub- Saharan Africa can, in theory, compete in the production of all manner of digital goods and services with anywhere else in the world.This article surveys the current state of our ongoing multi-year research into the topic, based on empirical research into a range of sectors and domains (including computer code writing, online freelancing, business process outsourcing, and digital entrepreneurship).

I am the Professor of Internet Geography at the Oxford Internet Institute, a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, and a Research Affiliate at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment.